James Bond shaken (not stirred) by love, not sex

Jane Seymour, left, and Roger Moore as 007 in the 1973 James Bond film "Live and Let Die." Was Bond looking for love?

Jane Seymour, left, and Roger Moore as 007 in the 1973 James Bond film "Live and Let Die." Was Bond looking for love? (United Artists and Danjaq)

Emily Keeler

The love life of the world's most glamorous, fictional martini-sipping spy is up for debate after the London launch of the upcoming James Bond novel, "Solo," an official 007 book penned by William Boyd.

At the book party, Boyd speculated on the root of the original international man of mystery's sexual adventures. “It seems to me he wants a relationship," the Guardian reports Boyd saying at the novel's launch at the Dorchester Hotel in London. "It is not just casual sex."

The James Bond character, who frequently wears a tux in his day to day spying-and-killing wheeling and dealings, is almost never casual, apparently even when it comes to the many sexual affairs he's conducted. Boyd, along with fellow Bond series authors Jeffery Deaver and Charlie Higson, said that 007 was always looking for true love, but “being a single, attractive, vital man, he would in some circumstances meet a woman and have a liaison.”

But not everyone is pleased to see the heavy-drinking and smoking agent's womanizing reputation called into question. David Black, chairman of the James Bond International Fan Club, told the Independent that he “can’t see how a long-term relationship could blossom as maybe [Bond] would like. He doesn’t want to be tied down -- he’s got a job to do.”

Graham Rye, editor of 007 Magazine, gave a similar statement, “He got a great deal of pleasure from sexual encounters with a variety of women, but he wasn’t preferring relationships at all -- he didn’t have time.”

William Boyd says he prefers the term “Bond Women” over “Bond Girls.”

If you'll permit the speculation, I suspect that James Bond, whether lonely for long-term love or hour-long loving, would himself most likely use neither term; as a class act, he must know that Tatiana Romanova and Pussy Galore, to name just a couple, are their own women.